20120821

The Devil's Two Eyes

It is ironic how I have successfully
fended off the temptations of watching TV all my life but am now in real danger of succumbing to the attraction of the Internet.

Come to think of it, these are
different media, but do have a lot in common. Both work with a screen. Both provide
messages and images. Both involvesedentary human consumption. Worse of all, both are addictive.

And the Internet is much more powerful
than TV. With today’s
highly sophisticated information and communication technology, the Internet as
a medium can do everything that TV is capable of. And more. And better. This is
because the user’s
engagement with the Internet is highly interactive. Whatever the user fancies, whether it is a
friend (real or virtual), an answer, a commodity at the other end of the world,
or anything we don’t
want to name, the gratification is almost immediate. And whatever we do on this
platform, be it just passive browsing or active chitchatting, as long as it
gives us pleasure, the tendency to do it again and again will get stronger and
stronger. As Norman Doidge said in his book The Brain that Changes Itself,
neurons that fire together wire together. Not only that. The satisfaction bar
keeps moving up so that it gets more and more difficult to get the same level
of pleasure. One has to plunge more and more deeply into the habit. Internet
porn is an excellent example.

Fortunately, awareness is the crucial
first step towards solving a problem. I do need to keep my habit of passive
browsing in check. Otherwise, I can easily just waste as much time, if not more,
on the Internet as I would on TV.

Towards the end of the last century,
Chris de Burgh tried to warn us of the habit of watching TV by portraying the
box as The Devil’s
Eye in a song of the same name. In the song, the Devil says: